“The basic idea of this site is that a brand exists entirely in people’s heads. Therefore, whatever it is they say a brand is, is what it is… A collective experiment in brand perception. All tags are generated by people like you and do not reflect the opinions of the site owner or anyone else he knows. Have fun.”

“But what precisely is brand risk? It has been defined in various ways, most of them too narrow. Under many risk management approaches, brand risk has no definition of its own. It is merely the by-product of a variety of other risks, such as product liability lawsuits or adverse regulatory decisions. At most it is defined as threats to brand equity—in other words, to those differentiators that cause consumers to choose one product or service over another.”

“Late last year, a slide show in The New York Times, ‘Reading Tea Leaves and Campaign Logos’ took to the blogwaves like wildfire. In it, illustrator Ward Sutton passed mocking judgment (to great effect) on all of the 2008 presidential candidate logos, commenting on anything from the type choice to the relative size of the R in Rudy Giuliani’s logo (”Extra large ‘R’ to remind you just how Republican he is”). But in his zeal to mock equally, he certainly got one critique wrong: Obama ‘08.”

“This collection contains letters that I received from trucking companies, private carriers, manufacturers, and suppliers during the time period between the late Fifties and early Sixties. A few were letters that my dad received. After that time frame I didn’t maintain my correspondence with trucking companies other than pertaining to my later career in the industry.”

“We at Strategic Name Development introduce to you the Seven Deadly Sins of Company Naming Changes, inspired by our proprietary Company Naming Changes research. We’ve covered major trends and pulled out the Greatest Hits, and we’d like to wrap up this undertaking with a few words of advice for what not to do.”

“Anybody who listens to the BBC’s online radio service will have noticed that their brands have been up-dated. This post is a quick review of what they’ve done and an assessment of if it works.

I find that brand portfolios are always a tricky subject. You find that with any large organization who develop a brand portfolio that they normally start off with little or no regard for the over-all styling in regard to each other. New products or services (shall we call them ‘ventures’) develop as a law unto themselves.

Suddenly, one day a marketing manager wakes up and realizes that the umbrella brand identity (in this example the ‘bbc brand’) seems alien to its children. Then steps are made to bring the portfolio into line so that a consistent style is met across all of them.” (Thanks Monoscope!)

“In early August, the medical supplies and drug firm Johnson & Johnson sued the American Red Cross over the right to use the red-cross emblem. Most of us had assumed that the red cross, seen on ambulances and first-aid kits, was a universal symbol of succor to the suffering. But like any graphic symbol, the red cross turns out to have more meanings and more history than would at first appear. And the rights to use this symbol are equally complicated—a reminder that many graphic symbols have more complex stories than we expect.”

” There’s no need to restate the high reverence (or pangs of envy, depending on where your loyalty lies) of Apple. They have innovated, floundered, and in recent years, risen from the ashes to make one hell of a run in computing and electronics devices. Love them or hate them, you can’t deny that they are adored by their fans. Their brand has reached that highly sought-after place in the world of marketing: they can do no wrong.

So how did they get there? Is it dumb luck? Or are they just much smarter than the rest of us? The most common reason given is Apple’s rabid devotion to design. That is, without a doubt, a key component of Apple’s success. But I think there’s more to it than that. Here are ten reasons why I think Apple is so successful today, and what we can learn from them…”

This is a list of international corporations and the fonts used in their identity and branding systems. (Thanks kottke.org!)

“When you start a company, eventually you are going to have to choose a company name. You may not take the decision that seriously - but trust me, a great name can make all the difference. As the online marketplace becomes increasingly cluttered it is more important than ever to be memorable and to stand out. The name of your company is a critical factor in this.”

“Edward Saenz, principal of Gravity Branding, has worked with tons of organizations and companies to come up with product names and marketing insights. He came up with the name ‘WiFi’ and several of Nissan’s truck names, for instance. Here we visit him in his home office to get some insights into the rough and tumble world of product naming.”

“Yesterday I followed a link from the excellent Putting People First blog to the UK Design Council’s discussion on experience design. Landing on that page, my heart sank, with my first thought being, ‘for f***’s sake, they’re conflating experience design with brand experience.’”

“Harris Interactive recently released a list of products ranked by brand equity, a measure of the brand’s popularity with US consumers… Marketing can be a double-edged sword. The companies who manufacture these products have done a fantastic job in marketing these products, so fantastic in some cases that the brand name is in danger of becoming a genericized trademark.”

“So what are the criteria for coming up with a godo company name? Well the list is short and sweet, but that doesn’t make the process any easier. So many names have been taken up that now you are either starting to see some recycled goodies or names that come from words that don’t even exist.”

“This is qwerky, notebook of the weirdest new webapp names.”